Pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma and its owners will pay $7.4 billion in compensation for their role in the opioid crisis in the U.S.

The American pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, reached an agreement with 15 U.S. states, under which they will pay a total of $7.4 billion as compensation for their role in the opioid crisis, a class of drugs used to relieve pain.

According to a statement released by New York State Attorney General Letitia James, the agreement requires the family to pay $6.5 billion over 15 years and the company to pay $900 million. The agreement must first be ratified by a court. Purdue Pharma manufactured the painkiller OxyContin, whose labeling is widely believed to have triggered the opioid crisis in the U.S. The company ceased producing opioids in 2018.

Based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 700,000 people in the U.S. died between 1999 and 2022 from opioid-related overdoses—whether legally prescribed or illegally obtained.

For the first time since 2018, the number of opioid deaths (mainly from fentanyl) slightly declined in 2023. In June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked an agreement reached in 2022 with all 50 U.S. states because the Sacklers would have paid $6 billion but would have been exempt from any future claims by their victims.

In 2019, after a flood of lawsuits against it, Purdue declared bankruptcy, but courts rejected its request, and it appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Sacklers were accused of aggressively marketing OxyContin, even though they knew it was highly problematic. Their sales generated tens of billions of dollars. Major drug distributors such as CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart, as well as a branch of the French advertising giant Publicis and the consulting firm McKinsey, also faced legal action for their roles in the crisis.

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